Michael Kanellos: December 8, 2008, 10:48 AM

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NetApp Throttles Air Conditioners, Reaps Millions of Dollars

Shut down the air conditioners and earn millions.

That’s the message from NetApp, the services and storage giant. The company received a $1.4 million dollar rebate from Pacific Gas and Electric for retrofitting its data center in Sunnyvale, Calif. with an eye toward energy efficiency.

The changes will save approximately $1.2 million in power bills a year. If you extrapolate that over three years, NetApp will save $3.6 million in power and still have that $1.4 million rebate.

The new data center, as configured, has a power use effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3. PUE is a ratio comparing the total amount of power consumed by a data center divided by the amount actually used for computing. A PUE of 1 is the mythical idea. Some data centers in California have a horrendous PUE of 3 or higher. Most of that extra power goes into air conditioning. Keeping servers cool takes about half of the power in a conventional data center.

Upgrades included a flywheel as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, energy-efficient transformers, outside air economizers (i.e. things that let in air from the outside to cool stuff), and a variable primary chiller plant.

Data centers use approximately 1.5 percent of the power in the U.S. and 2.5 percent here in Northern California and the figure is rising. Perhaps even more important for greentech companies, data centers have already signaled that they will invest in energy efficiency technologies, which makes them an easier sales target than some other industries.

PG&E is also working on a program to give large companies rebates for replacing PCs with thin clients.

Michael Kanellos: December 8, 2008, 6:55 AM

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A Molecular Screening Process for Improving Solar Cells

Developing new solar technologies isn’t that different from finding new drugs, say IBM and Harvard.

The two are forming a new World Community Grid project to find new molecules for harvesting power from the sun. Under the project, IBM will offer up computing cycles on its cloud computer to researchers to test out the efficacy of various molecules.

This, in a nutshell, is how drugs are developed. Researchers examine billions of different combinations of proteins to see how they interact. Running the mind-boggling number of combinations takes repetitive, brute-force computing power. The same is true when it comes to materials for organic solar. A lot of elements and materials can harvest energy from the sun, but the trick is finding the exact combination that will do it efficiently. The scope of the project would take 22 years on an ordinary grid. It might take only two years on the cloud as proposed under this project.

Of course, even if they find a solution, there is no guarantee that organic solar cells will work, or establish a large market. Reliability, durability and cost have been some of the problems associated with photovoltaic dyes. Konarka has spent tens of millions of VC funds and spent several years trying to get organic solar cells to mass production and mass acceptance. It’s still on the fringe. It may turn out that thin film technologies actually work better. But who knows? This cloud project will give researchers a huge catalog of information on how molecules react with the sun.

William Brent: December 8, 2008, 6:50 AM

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A Cleantech World for Poor Is Possible (and Profitable)

The distributed and micro nature of cleantech means that it has an important role to play in helping the world’s poor, especially in the areas of energy and water. In fact, cleantech in the developing world is increasingly seen as an economic opportunity for local communities (for example, solar water heaters in China).

Perhaps just as important, the introduction of clean energy into the developing world, if successful, could have a hugely ameliorating effect on global climate change as those economies expand, people are pulled out of poverty and consumption increases. Solutions for the poor are often lower tech, but higher inspiration. Take the group of six African students who came up with a method of using the sun’s energy to take humidity from the air and turn it into potable water. Or the compost toilet that came out of the Interprofessional Projects Program (IPRO) series appropriately called Developing Extremely Affordable Products for the Rural Poor of the World. More recently, the Sahara Forest Project was announced, with the goal of using concentrated solar power and seawater greenhouses to produce clean energy and water in Africa on a much greater scale. Other great examples that are also equally inspiring have been built around small scale wind, solar cooking, micro hydro, PV-powered water distillation and pumping, biogas, rainwater harvesting, etc.

My closest association with the growing momentum in this area is my work with clean-emission cookstove company Envirofit, which is trying to end indoor air pollution, a silent and largely unknown killer in the developing world that results from the burning of dirty cooking and heating fuel in cramped quarters. Envirofit, although a non-profit, is taking a business approach to the problem. Traditionally, the failed top-down philanthropic model was built on spending money to buy clean-burning stoves, giving them away and hoping they didn’t break. Instead, Envirofit is letting the market lead from the ground up—it’s building a sales, distribution, financing and service infrastructure around the stoves so that locals, starting in India, can actually own the process, as opposed to simply being recipients of charity.

This market approach is gaining ground across the donor and NGO world, and initial results from the Envirofit approach in India are very promising. Dr. E.F. Schumacher was one of the earliest proponents of what he called “intermediate technology,” a belief that there are cheaper, more appropriate ways of addressing problems in the developing world other than the capital- and resource-intensive ways of the West. Although motivated by different reasons, more and more for-profit companies are working to improve the development of clean water and energy technology in poor countries. Some companies, like Coke and others in the food and beverage industry, are simply involved because they have no choice (they only remain in business if there is clean water). At the international level, the World Bank, after signing on to support the Clean Energy for Development Investment Framework, announced it would raise a $5 billion cleantech fund for the developing world earlier this year, and Japan has also committed to $10 billion for its Cool Earth Partnership. Some influential private funding organizations are working increasingly in this area as well, including the Acumen Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Light up the World Foundation and Shell Foundation. If you are looking to make an individual contribution, consider INVEST, Green Microfinance, Practical Action, Global Green and Global Giving.

Ultimately its going to have to be a combination of private sector innovation and capital, and public sector support to bring the might of cleantech to the poor in places that lack basic infrastructure and are often remotely situated. Of course, poverty is not the exclusive domain of the developing world. Action is also being taken in the United States and other richer countries to bring clean energy to the poor.

Here’s a list of 12 technologies and initiatives with potential to help solve the clean energy and water conundrum for the world’s poor. Additional programs focused on the use of solar to alleviate poverty and health issues can be found here and here.

LifeStraw - Lighting Africa - Watel - Envirofit - Sahara Forest Project - Warm Winter Challenge - World Clean Energy Awards - Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development - Grameen Shakti - Architecture for Humanity - SELCO - REN21

This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day.

A former foreign correspondent, William Brent is a public relations exec at Weber Shandwick. He started the firm’s cleantech practice. More can be found at http://www.mrcleantech.com.

Michael Kanellos: December 8, 2008, 6:38 AM

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Was the Roman Empire Felled by Climate Change?

A team of U.S. and Israeli geologists will publish a paper asserting that climate change could have contributed to the downfall of both halves of the Roman Empire.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, they pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. The results found increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. It was particularly dry from 100 A.D. to 400 A.D.

The Roman Republic transformed into the Empire around 44 B.C. (see Caesar, Julius) and expanded across Europe, Africa and the Middle East until exhausting itself centuries later.

“Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn’t known, but it is an interesting correlation,” said University of Wisconsin Professor John W. Valley. “These things were certainly going on at the time that those historic changes occurred.”

Personally, I don’t buy this one. There were a lot of causes: ineptitude, untenable expansion, greed, failed cultural assimilation, and people like Alaric, King of the Visigoths (not to be confused with Bob of the Ostrogoths), who came through and sacked the city in 410 A.D. Romans weren’t starving. They were overpowered by circumstances. As Edward Gibbon, author of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” wrote:

“The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial.”

But an interesting study nonetheless.